Tag Archives: Mills

This is my fourth posting on the health report authored by Dr. Dora Mills of the Maine CDC, which found there were no health issues caused by wind turbines. The previous three (shorter critique part 1, longer critique part 2 and DEP emission numbers) concerned themselves with the content of the Mills report. In this posting I am concentrating on the circumstances surrounding the report’s creation.

As promised in my part 1, I’ve read through the longer noise and health report from Maine’s chief of public health, Dr. Mills. After going through the short release I was prepared for a pretty poor report, but it exceeded even my rock-bottom expectations. Of the five critiques I’ve done so far, hers is the worst. My critique runs twelve pages, about twice the size of her report. It gets pretty tedious in places, I’m afraid, but I wanted to fully document just how poor this report was.

From my conclusion:

I hope I’ve accurately conveyed just how weak the foundation of Mills’ dismissal of the health effects of wind turbines was. Not only did she not go into the field to interview any victims or doctors, she didn’t even bother trying to find any studies that went into the field and interviewed any victims or doctors. How in the world someone can not even look for something and then in good conscience declare they didn’t find it? This study will end up causing harm to Maine’s citizens as it will allow developers to continue placing projects too close to people’s homes. It appears that Dr. Mills values her job over her professional obligations, and that is shameful, simply shameful.

Health studies purporting to show there’s no adverse health effects from wind turbines are everywhere these days, it seems. To date I have posted detailed critiques of four of them: Chatham (Colby), AWEA/CanWEA (Colby et al), Ontario CMOH (King) and Australia’s NHMRC. They vary in quality a great deal, from merely bad to just outrageous. But they all have two things in common: (1) none of them has ever wandered into the field to interview either victims or their doctors, and (2) they were all sponsored by someone with either an interest in wind energy or who was publicly committed to it. It is as though the wind industry has come up with a health-effects-denying template that on the face of it is defensible, and that template will get used and reused until it is no longer so.

Maine’s Report was authored by Dr. Dora Mills, who is the head of Maine’s public health service. Keep in mind that her boss, Governor Baldacci, is a serious supporter of wind energy. She claims [backup link] to have researched “several dozen papers and other sources of information” and has concluded “I do not find evidence to support a moratorium on wind turbine projects.”